This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education |

Interesting, I am not a huge fan of homeschooling as there can be to many abuses that are oft times overlooked and detrimental to the child. But there are some instances where it works out for the better and Logan may be one such example. Motivation, ability and involvement of the parent factors into that paradigm as well as the needs of the child.

Should we jump on the band wagon? Is he an exception or the rule, ",,,studies done in the US and Canada show that home schooled children out perform their peers from both private and public schools." There is no doubt he is gifted, has the support of his parents, and lives a comfortable middle class life; but this is no longer the norm, just because it work for Logan doesn't mean it will work for all.

What I would like to see, take the concepts of homeschooling (i.e. what Logan has spoken about) and apply them to our current school systems.
__________
Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer. As Logan has mentioned, when he grows up he wants to be happy and healthy. He says that educational systems should be teaching us how to make a life, instead of just how to make a living. At a TEDx talk in 2013, he discussed how hacking his education is helping him achieve that goal.

This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education |

Ex-Moonie Diane Benscoter: How cults think - YouTube

My journey to coming here today started in 1974. That's me with the funny gloves. I was 17 and going on a peace walk. What I didn't know though, was most of those people, standing there with me, were Moonies. And within a week I had come to believe that the second coming of Christ had occurred, that it was Sun Myung Moon, and that I had been specially chosen and prepared by God to be his disciple.

Now as cool as that sounds, my family was not that thrilled with this. And they tried everything they could to get me out of there,,,

That is the opening to Diane Benscoter's Tedtalk concerning "How Cults Think," she continues,

And about 20 years went by. There was a burning question though that would not leave me. And that was, "How did this happen to me?" And in fact, what did happen to my brain? Because something did. And so I decided to write a book, a memoir, about this decade of my life.

I think we have all hit that "burning question" phase at some point in our lives. We have all wonder or been confronted by the WTF was I thinking. What I find interesting is that Benscoter is not the only individual who has equated extreme religious bullshitery to a brain virus (Dr Darrell Ray, The God Virus):

And so what is this? How does this work? And how I've come to view what happened to me is a viral memetic infection. For those of you who aren't familiar with memetics, a meme has been defined as an idea that replicates in the human brain and moves from brain to brain like a virus, much like a virus. The way a virus works is - it can infect and do the most damage to someone who has a compromised immune system.

What really caught my attention was Benscoter's use of the "Us vs Them" mentality A dichotomy I have noticed in regards to Nephilim Eschatology and the Ancient Alien Hypothesis: ,,,[a]nd the most dangerous part of this is that is creates "us" and "them," "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil." And it makes anything possible. Makes anything rationalizable.

In a blog post Benscoter talks further in regards to memeplexes, groups of memes which have been used to understand the phenomenon of religion,

This concept gives us a means to view, from an evolutionary perspective, how and why we have tended to clump together into groups with highly polarized ideologies. We can start to understand the pull to view the world from a “Us” versus “Them” perspective. To fully understand how memeplexes work we must examine the psychological elements present in the most powerful and dangerous memeplexes currently in our existence – as well as in our history.

and cites the work of Robert Lifton and his concept of totalism and by proxy "thought reform."

What I find sobering is that I vaguely remember studying some of Lifton's ideas in college and recently watched his appearance in Cults - Dangerous Devotion, a 2009 History channel presentation.

I have to agree with Benscoter in her conclusion to her post and definitely something more to explore:

As a species, we can no longer afford to be swept up in polarizing memeplexes that convince us, falsely, that there are easy answers to life’s hard questions and that our memeplex’s view is THE ultimate truth. Life’s hard questions must be examined with reason and scientific process. This is not possible in a totalistic memeplex.

We must deconstruct totalistic memeplexes to shed light on the glue that binds them and the fuel that gives them power. Only then can we hope to avoid new memeplexes from being born and evolving into dangerous polarizing monsters.

See also: Q&A with Diane Benscoter: Joining, leaving and ultimately defeating the cult

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds - YouTube

My response to the vile letter sent to Karla Begley, the mother of 13-year-old Max, "We need to help students who have unique minds to be successful."

Temple Grandin is autistic and for many a true hero. A published author Thinking in Pictures (1996) was made into a movie called Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes and won 7 Emmy Awards. Her new book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum came out in April of this
year. As such Grandin is one of the world’s most accomplished and well-known adults with autism; she is a professor at Colorado State University.

During her Tedtalk what came across to me was her ability to describe her experience to the audience. Talking of her High Definition Fiber Tracking that allowed her to see where the connectivity of her brain differs from most people's. And how important that "extra" knowledge can be in working with children, which is where her concern lays.

She relates in writing her first book that she thought everyone with autism saw in pictures the way she does. But in talking to others she discovered that some think differently: mainly photorealistic visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, and verbal thinkers. All people have multiple intelligence – strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. But people on the autism spectrum tend to have extremes, as Grandin puts it, "a specialists mind." They're particularly skilled at one way of seeing the world and truly terrible at others.

"The world needs different kinds of minds to work together."

What I find enlightening in regards to Grandin, she embraces her uniqueness and uses it to contribute something different, and teach us something. "Real change in the real world."

Enjoy!!

Eleanor Longden: The voices in my head - YouTube

Whilst perusing the listing of TEDtalks, I came across this gem which has once again opened a Pandora's box of thinking in regards to how mental illness is seen and dealt with in society. So much of her experience I can relate to but in the end Longden, like so many others, has been able gain valuable insight into the inner workings of her mind. To some degree, her schizophrenia can be viewed as a gift which allowed her to be aware of her emotions and motivations. Something that many of us seek through our explorations of spirituality, through meditation or prayer. It makes me ponder this so called veil of normalcy, or as Longden puts it this, "well crafted veneer."

Like Longden I was lucky, after previous failures with therapists, I came across one that looked beyond my diagnosis. My shrink was decent, my psyche nurse was the bomb, but I didn't do so well with therapists after 7 tries though I hit pay dirt. Longden had a similar experience and was told, it would almost have been better if she’d had cancer because it would be easier to cure.

"A broken and haunted person began that journey but the person who emerged was a survivor and would ultimately grow into the person I was destined to be."